It remains to be seen whether Robert Zemeckis‘ next project after Flight will see him sticking with live-action or returning to animation, but one thing’s for certain: It won’t be Yellow Submarine. The project’s suffered several setbacks over the past few years, and it sounds like Zemeckis has finally given up on it once and for all. Read his comments after the jump.

Please Recommend /Film on Facebook

This year’s SXSW Film Festival will open in less than a month, on Friday, March 9, 2012, and run through Saturday, March 17 in Austin, Texas. The opening night film is the world premiere of Joss Whedon & Drew Goddard’s The Cabin in the Woods, and the rest of the film schedule includes pictures such as God Bless America, The Raid, and Midnight entriesJohn Dies at the End and V/H/S.

Now the last wave of SXSW film programming has been announced. The lineup now includes some Sundance 2012 faves such as Searching For Sugar Man (review), Shut Up and Play the Hits (trailer), Safety Not Guaranteed (review), Sleepwalk With Me (review).

There are even quite a few other movies that don’t have titles beginning with ‘s,’ such as Todd Rohal‘s Nature Calls, featuring Patton Oswalt and Johnny Knoxville, and the restored version of Yellow Submarine.

You can find the lineup of today’s film announcements below, and check the entire schedule, complete with both screening and conference dates and times, at www.sxsw.com/film. Read More »

Talk about awkward. The last headline below this one is an endorsement of mocap filmmaking from Steven Spielberg. But the major industry talk today that wasn’t centered on SXSW was all about how the mocap film Mars Needs Moms absolutely tanked in its debut weekend. There is some significant fallout from that failure: Disney has passed on the mocap remake of the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine, which Robert Zemeckis had planned to make this year. Read More »

Briefly: A week ago there was a rumor that the Robert Zemeckis 3D remake of Yellow Submarine was dead. The source was actor David Tennant, who said on a UK talk show that he had been up for a part as a Blue Meanie. His comments about not getting the part led to speculation that the film was dead altogether.

But Yellow Submarine is alive and well, says Robert Zemeckis. While on the red carpet for the 25th anniversary of Back to the Future he told Moviefone the film is “all ahead full.” Accept his slightly awkward phrasing there, and walk away with the spirit of his statement intact. Unless you think a mocapped 3D Yellow Submarine is super weird and slightly counter to the idea of the original film, in which case you’ll just have to live with the situation.

We’ve heard the film would shoot in April of next year, and the cast is as follows: Cary Elwes (George Harrison), Dean Lennox Kelly (John Lennon), Peter Serafinowicz (Paul McCartney)and Adam Campbell (Ringo Starr) are the quartet of ‘new’ Beatles. (Remember that in the original film the Beatles didn’t even voice their own characters, except in a few segments.)

Very unexpected news from the Disney camp today: the studio has just issued a press release saying that, after production finishes on Mars Needs Moms, the Robert Zemeckis studio ImageMovers Digital will be closed in 2011. Read More »

The 3D and motion capture work in Avatar may be the biggest cinematic talking points going right now but don’t forget about Robert Zemeckis. He’s been in the mocap and 3D trenches, and is moving forward with a remake of the animated Beatles film Yellow Submarine. The film will use mocap and CGI to recreate the hand-drawn animation of the original film, while a small collection of voices will stand in as the new Beatles. Meet the quartet after the break. Read More »

After the initial call for actors to play The Beatles another Yellow Submarine casting notice has now been issued. This one details some of the major supporting roles that Robert Zemeckis is looking to fill, and in between the character information there’s the odd bit of plot info as well as some telling details of design. So far, it all seems fully contingent with the original movie.

The notice opens with the following statement of premise:

The Yellow Submarine follows a singing group of four British young men that are asked to help a land that has been overtaken by mean spirited creatures. They are recruited by an escapee to come and bring joy and music back to the land.

This weekend, the 28th and 29th of November, there’s a huge Beatles convention taking place in Stamford, Connecticut. Amongst all of the merchandise sales and other such typical expo shenanigans, there’s also set to be an open audition for Beatlemaniacs wanting to try out for casting in what they’re calling “The Fab Four.” Of course, that the film “will be shot as a motion-capture feature like the current Disney release of A Christmas Carol” tells us everything we need to know – this is Robert Zemeckis‘ remake of Yellow Submarine.

There’s already some suspicion, though, that this casting call is nothing more than a publicity stunt. Zemeckis has already talked about the possibility of Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr playing themselves in the film, there’s been a number of previous auditions, and even stories of name actors being up for the roles, perhaps even cast in them already.

Time Out London has published a list of the 50 greatest animated feature films of all time curated by Terry Gilliam . I’m not sure if this means that Gilliam hand picked the titles on the list, or if the filmmaker was simply commenting on the list created by the TimeOut editors. Either way, you can find a listing of the top 20 entries below: